Even millennia before the invention of spacecraft, astronomers were baffled by the moon's structure. Scientists debated whether the moon was simply a rocky object, like Martian moons, or whether it had a more intricate interior geology at the turn of the 20th century. The argument has now been resolved.
The moon, like Earth, has a solid inner core and a fluid outer core, according to the most recent mathematical theories. The inner core of the Moon has a diameter of around 500 kilometers, or about 15% of its entire diameter, and is composed of a metal with a density comparable to that of iron.
The Moon’s surprising structure
The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft from India, which landed on the moon in August 2023, has discovered the first lunar tremor in more than 50 years. However, when they first began this investigation, the researchers from Côte d'Azur University in France did not have access to this data and were forced to depend on outdated Apollo-era data. The problem is that the resolution of old data is inadequate by modern standards and makes it impossible to assess the condition of the lunar core.
The researchers built a profile of the moon's properties and gathered further information from space missions and lunar laser range studies in an effort to move forward. This involves, among other things, its density and fluctuation in distance from Earth. They then conducted modeling with several core kinds to see which best matched the observational data.
The researchers came to numerous significant conclusions. First, they discovered that less dense stuff climbs higher while denser material falls into the moon's center. Researchers have previously proposed this as a theory to account for the occurrence of specific elements in volcanic zones of the moon. But it's simply one aspect of the overall picture.
The researchers also discovered that the lunar core, which has a solid inner core and an outside fluid layer, is strikingly similar to that of the Earth. 15% of the Moon's width, or 500 kilometers, is the diameter of the core. Strangely, a team lead by NASA scientists discovered a comparable conclusion in 2011 while utilizing seismological methods to analyze Apollo data in order to examine the lunar core. This finding has more confidence because the two research agree utilizing two different methodologies.
Although the discovery sheds some light on the moon's structure, there are still a great deal of unanswered questions, such as what happened to the moon's magnetic field. The moon's magnetic field was strong shortly after it originated and started to weaken some 3.2 billion years ago. Convection and movement in the center produced the field.
As government organizations and private space businesses embark on their planned lunar missions, more information about the moon may soon be available for research. On the Artemis II mission, NASA intends to return four astronauts to the moon in 2024. Private space businesses like ispace, Astrobotic, and Intuitive Machines all have their own aspirations.
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